


a refuge in your hearth

by wordsofIsibel (interstitial_words)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Modern AU, Mute Mollymauk Tealeaf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial_words/pseuds/wordsofIsibel
Summary: Moder AU; drabble-ishMollymauk wonders.(A study of the space between missing words, warmth and music)
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	a refuge in your hearth

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my documents for a long, long while. It was supposed to be a multi chapter fic, but life has the peculiar thing of happening. But, today is a day I guess. And I want to write again; sharing what I have seems like a good place to start.  
> (This is not betaed because I have no beta, and I'm way to scared to talk to someone and ask).

**i. eighteen minutes from the sun (1)**

Mollymauk wonders about physicality. The space between the curve of that half-elven girl’s feet and the metal pole that he himself is hanging on, and the goliath in the next row of seats, and how he looks so comically large next to the gnome girl on the other seat. The shoulder to shoulder of the pair of humans, and the soft moving of the lips of the half-orc woman speaking quietly on the phone.

The bus trembles under his feet waiting for the red light to change, cold night air filling his lungs and the city looks bright outside of the windows. He grips the metal with a bit of force when the bus lurches forward and the feet of the half-elven girl moves, crosses with the other at the ankle and Mollymauk stares a bit at the empty space.

The bus stops again, and Mollymauk breaths deeply. He looks outside of the window; he’s not far now, he thinks. The loud booming laugh of the goliath fills the air and the yellow lights flicker mostly warming, and the scene becomes a little bit charming. Mollymauk shifts on his feet, eyes lost in the moving buildings outside, and wonders. The space full of his own body wrapped in colours, and the empty space around him of the full bus but no so full that people are shoved into each other. And he shudders a little bit, under his skin, on the back of his spine.

The bus opens its doors on a station, and Mollymauk drops his hand. He walks to the back door, stepping out into the streetlight.

***

This is how his morning goes. Yasha is out, so Mollymauk rolls out of bed at, at least, 9 am. He went grocery shopping last night, so he pulls the kettle out and makes scrambled eggs and bites on the white bread. The eggs are a bit unsalted, and the first sip of the tea scalds his tongue but he thinks, fiddling with an old battery-run radio, that really, like this, things aren’t so bad.

His fingers turn the dial and a female voice, with a heavy accent that Mollymauk can’t really place, welcomes the day. He lets his lips curve in a victorious smile; is the first time since he started eating his breakfast alone that he managed to use the radio. The voice of the radio lets a song take over. Mollymauk finishes the rest of his tea, cooled down enough to warm him pleasantly. The song is purely instrumental, a guitar he thinks and a piano; he listens intently and then he’s blown away when the pace picks up and the music becomes lively, breezy and rich (2). 

Yes, he is content enough. The radio hums in the background and he moves about the apartment, his tail flickering and his smile wide. Maybe Yasha would be proud, maybe relived; he wishes for happy, Mollymauk wants Yasha to be happy and to dance with him in the kitchen, to drink her coffee without sugar and get potted plants, but, most of all, to be happy and not worrying. He does the dishes, and cleans the counter. The radio and the broadcaster keep the silence at bay, and most of the songs are in a language that he can’t understand but he’s smiling.

Mollymauk cleans the small apartment, even mops the floor. He changes his bedding, and puts a load of dirty clothes on the washer. He sits on the dryer, absently tracing the words on the paper’s crossword. He drops the paper on his lap and looks outside through the small window in the wall. There’s not much to see, just a patch of very blue and very bright sky. It’s an almost warm blue, like a whiff of peach tea and fresh laundry, or the soft voice of Yasha. And Mollymauk drowns in the blue, the crinkled of paper under his fingers and the sound of the radio.

***

He doesn’t go out much for the next days, but it’s ok. He still has food from his last trip to the grocery store and the radio has not failed him. Mollymauk is grinning a bit, a pencil on his hand and a worksheet spread on the coffee table, tracing bold letters one by one. The papers are tossed around on the table and floor, like discarder feathers or fallen leaves, and his tail is thumping against the carpet with the rhythm of the song.

Mollymauk is humming, softly.

And that’s how Yasha finds him. She drops the backpack she was holding to the floor, not even sparing a glance to it. The woman looks at him, with her mismatched eyes wide open. Mollymauk jumps at the sound and turns around, his lips stretching on a grin full of fangs and early morning sun.

“Molly, hi.” She says, smiling a little when he waves. And carefully, dries the dampness that gathered in her eyes.

(Molly and Yasha meet up in college. They signed to the same class; method acting. It was a core class for Molly, and Yasha took it to fill her schedule and get some extra credit. Molly was excellent, and he made the teacher cry more than once; the poem from Pizarnik was memorable (3). Yasha, was not as good, to awkward to be anything but silence and hesitance; she had, nonetheless, read a poem by Robert Frost with her whole heart (4).

And Mollymauk had been bright and unabashedly him, and so, so full of bullshit, and Yasha so frank and stoic and decked in black with just a little of white. They were friends, the bests of friends, trusting each other with every scrap of their soul and keeping each other every word and high hope.)

(Until something broke.)

[an all compassing rage fills her bones, and she screams but it dies in her lips and a something cracks on her head and hot hot pain spreads over her and then another blow sends her to the sidewalk and her world goes black but before she sees purple and red, so much red]

(Mollymauk ended up in the hospital, and he didn’t wake up. His wounds closed, the split lip and the black eye and the cracked ribs. And the number of bandages that covered his head and hands slowly banished but he didn’t wake up.)

(And then he did. But everything had faded; empty).

***

Now that Yasha is back they need enough groceries for the two of them. The woman is looking in the fridge, checking what they need and telling Molly, who is sitting on the counter with a notepad slowly writing the items. They take their time, not rushing. Finding comfort in the moment, in the shared space and warm enough air.

Finally, Yasha closes the cupboard and looks at Molly, asking silently if he gotten all of it. The tiefling smiles, the bit of his fangs poking out of his lips and rips the sheet he was writing on before passing it to the woman. Yasha scans the list and stops, and then shifts her eyes to Mollumauk who just smiles even more brightly. 

“Molly, no.” And Molly laughs. Yasha eyes widen a fraction, quickly blinks and readjust her feet under her. “We are not…” She takes a deep breath. “…we aren’t getting a cat at the grocery store…” Molly pouts. “Do…? Do they sell cats there?” Molly just shrugs, smile returning. Yasha looks at him, long and deep. Mollymauk, used to her stare (in what he can remember, or maybe because he just knows, or maybe because of pure disposition) just hums and points to the list, urging her to continued reading. There’s no other additional items, and the list has everything they need. It’s well written too, in large, wobbly letters fit for a child but every word is correctly spelled.

Yasha smiles softly, warm pride filling her chest, she looks at Mollymauk and nods. “This is very well done Molly.” She pauses briefly, and drinks the sigh of the purple tiefling beaming. “You have come far. I’m proud.” Her voice is soft but firm. Mollymauk jumps down from the counter and wraps his arms around Yasha torso, who –a bit awkwardly– returns the hug with one arm, the list crumpling a bit between them. The radio is still humming in the background.

_de tí saldrá la luz / tan sólo así serás feliz / y deberás luchar / si quieres descubrir la fe / la lluvia borra la maldad / y lava todas las heridas de tu alma (5)._

Mollymauk lets go of Yasha and turns around, beckoning to the woman with his hands. He picks his coat from the back of the sofa, and a set of keys form a bowl in the coffee table. A quick flick of his wrist send the keys flaying towards Yasha who caught them with no problem. She turns off the radio, a little sad about the silence, but they leave the apartment, locking behind them before she (or Molly) could fall into it.

***

(For Yasha silence now is a scream without sound. She had never seen something like that, raw and sharp, but it spilled from the lips of Molly and he clutched his chest, shaking in the dark and sterile room. The hospitable is asleep around them, not quite still but everything is happening so, so far. It’s the middle of the night and everything is so empty, and Molly couldn’t grasp what he was having nightmares about. [and she’s so afraid that he’s gone, gone where she can’t pull him, and what good is lifting weights and punching bags in the gym when she can’t find the strength to pull her friend together?])

***

That night they eat pasta, made with tomato sauce, bacon, olive oil, garlic and onion. Yasha is impressed with the simplicity of it, and Mollymauk grins proudly. And he carefully collects the moment in the folds of his coat, stitching it to his heart so if he loses the details in his head he’ll never really forget it. The soft sound of Yasha telling him about mountains. Mountains! He thinks he wants to see them. And Yasha laughing earnestly at the mess he made of his face, and he’s half-attempt at stopping her for taking a picture; he’s so very happy, too much to care about his dignity and/or style, and that picture is just for her. The way the split a bottle of red wine and how it colors Yasha’s tongue a deep purple-red. The radio that has not failed them, filling the background to the brim with electric, neon music (6). The soft, distant all-encompassing life outside their window. The moon, just shy of being full climbing on the night sky above their window.

They clean the table and the kitchen, and Mollymauk wonders how they/he got tomato sauce on the door of the fridge. The radio sings, and they dance and jump around in the small kitchen. Yasha makes bubbles with the soap and her hands, and Molly flicks water to her. They are happy, laughing and glowing. 

It’s good because, sometimes, Yasha still looks at him with an infinite amount of sadness behind her mismatched eyes. Somedays, he wants to hug her, to dig in her ribs and pull out every shard of pain; other days he wants to curl up and become transparent, to never leave his bed because he can’t easy her sorrow, and he can’t pinpoint where his comes from; sometimes he scratches the walls and rips the paper because he’s still alive and she’s grieving; other times he just wants to feel angry again and avenge himself. Most of the time he’s breathing, in and out; and on other moments he’s content enough.

The reality is that Mollymauk can’t talk, and until a few months ago his memories are none existent. The thing is that he’s trying, and so is Yasha, and they might be getting better. And the absolute true is that he loves Yasha, and Yasha loves Mollymauk.

* * *

(0) title for the fic from [Asilo en tu corazón](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46_lxst4Xzc) by Luis Alberto Spinetta  
(1 & 2) title of the work, [A dieciocho minutos del sol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3cE90Ki0X0) by Luis Alberto Spinetta; fist song mentioned “the music becomes lively, breezy and rich” is also this one.  
(3) poem by Pizarnk, “El despertar”  
(4) poem by Robert Frost, “Wind And Window Flower”  
(5) de tí saldrá la luz / tan sólo así serás feliz / y deberás luchar / si quieres descubrir la fe / la lluvia borra la maldad / y lava todas las heridas de tu alma is [Quedándote o Yéndote](youtube.com/watch?v=fN_CFG_elMU) by Luis Alberto Spinetta  
(6) neon music is [Cuando pase el temblo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixjMZeQE4mo)r by Soda Stereo


End file.
